Gracious Living

I spent 4 hours listening to the Little House on the Prairie audiobook this week while doing some work, and I am just bursting with some great insights! This is the book where the Ingalls family moves from their Little House in the Big Woods (of Wisconsin) and head west to Kansas in a covered wagon.



One of the main points that stood out to me was the family's ability to maintain a very normal lifestyle while traveling. They were basically on an extended campout, and rarely passed through any towns or saw any people.



Each morning they woke with the sun (if not sooner) and began the chores. Water had to be carried from the nearest creek for coffee and for washing breakfast dishes. The horses must be taken to water as well. Ma would begin making breakfast while the girls made their beds in the wagon.



Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie washed their faces and combed their hair and dressed nicely each day. After breakfast, Ma and the girls would wash and wipe the dishes and clean up the campsite. They would gather up all the twigs and throw them in the fire.



If it was a wash day, Ma would heat water that Pa had carried from the creek to do her laundry in. She would wash all the clothing and bedding, and then lay it out on the clean grass to dry in the sun. And then . . . gasp! She would iron. Out in the middle of the prairie, with no people and no towns, Ma sill ironed the clothes!

When the family gathered around to eat, Ma and Pa sat on the wagon bench, and Laura and Mary sat on the wagon tongue. They held their tin plates in their laps. Mary and Laura shared their tin cup of water.

There were times when Ma would remind Laura not to talk with her mouth full, or not to sing 'at table.' Laura thought to herself, "there is no table" but the rule held fast!

Mary and Laura must wear their sunbonnet while playing, to avoid becoming 'brown as an Indian.'

So, in the middle of the wide, wide prairie the Ingalls family continued to live as if they were in polite society. I think Ma felt so strongly that the wild country they were traveling in would not make her girls into wild hoodlums, that she insisted on living exactly the way they had back in their little log home in Wisconsin.

Contrast that with today. Every time I go into the grocery store I see at least one person wearing pajama pants and house shoes to shop. Or worse.

It seems that many people don't care. Simple grooming has become too troublesome for some. Table manners in restaurants (or at home) don't exist anymore. Children have little or no standards to meet regarding their behavior.

I'm not preaching the need for makeup and salon-styled hair, or drinking tea with your pinky stuck out just so, or even the popular "children should be seen and not heard" (although some days I have contemplated enacting that one).

But if Ma and her girls could maintain a gracious standard of living from their covered wagon in the middle of nowhere, is it too much for us to accomplish in our modern society?

I don't think so!

Threshing

Farmer Boy is the one story in the Little House set that does not talk about Laura. It tells of her husband, Almanzo, as he grew up on a farm in upstate New York. There is so much interesting information in this book, historically and otherwise.

If you're interested in self-sufficiency, you'll find a wealth of information.

If you like little humor, there's plenty here!

If you want nuggets of wisdom, the Wilder family can share plenty.

Here's just one little thing that jumped out at me this week. Almanzo and Father were threshing the wheat in the barn during a winter storm.

Almanzo asked Father why he did not hire the machine that did threshing. Three men had brought it into the country last fall, and Father had gone to see it. It would thresh a man's whole grain crop in a few days.

"That's a lazy man's way to thresh," Father said. "Haste makes waste, but a lazy man'd rather get his work done fast than do it himself. That machine chews up the straw till it's not fit to feed stock, and it scatters grain around and wastes it.

"All it saves is time, son. And what good is time, with nothing to do? You want to sit and twiddle your thumbs, all these stormy winter days?"

"No!" said Almanzo. He had enough of that, on Sundays.
- Taken from Farmer Boy in the chapter entitled Threshing

That is a great example of how the Wilder family lived, and Almanzo carried this work ethic into his adulthood. When he moved out west to the Dakota Territory, he fibbed about his age so he could apply for a homestead. The requirement for free land was that you must be 18 years old and be willing to live on and work your land for 5 months out of each year for a number of years. Now, I don't condone lying. This just illustrates Almanzo's willingness to jump in and start farming.

When he and Laura were married and had moved to Missouri, they purchased a farm, where Laura and Almanzo worked it all by hand. Almanzo found and hauled large rocks and boulders from his farming site and used them to build a house.

Today, we have all manner of things to fill our 'time.' There's plenty of entertainment out there, and it's fun to be entertained. And if we can work hard and have fun, we will have a very rich life.

Laura had just taken a job in town sewing shirts. It was her first paying job. All of her wages were given to Ma (voluntarily) to help send her blind sister, Mary, to college.

All the week, she looked forward to the pleasures of bringing home her wages to Ma. Often she thought, too, that this was only the beginning.

In two more years she would be sixteen, old enough to teach school. If she studied hard and faithfully, and got a teacher's certificate, and then got a school to teach, she would be a real help to Pa and Ma. Then she could begin to pay them for all that it had cost to provide for her since she was a baby. Then, surely, they could send Mary to college.
From Little Town on the Prairie in the chapter entitled The Month of Roses

The sentence that jumped out at me was that Laura "could begin to repay (Ma and Pa) for all that it had cost to provide for her since she was a baby." That is a profound concept! This thought, as well as the desire to help send Mary to college, came from a truly generous spirit.

It is a real testament to the selfless and loving attitude that the Ingalls family lived out in their daily lives. As I mentioned in my welcome post, each family member worked for the good of the whole family. They all had interests and talents, but none of them pursued them selfishly. They were a very strong family unit, and the comfort and good of the other members of the family were important to everyone.

Imagine the peace in a home like that! It is true that "it is more blessed to give than receive." When you give from the kindness of your heart, it truly blesses you, too!